<smiles>

May 1st, 2014.
It feels like yesterday.
It feels like a million miles away.
It was on this date that it was announced.
Twist Image’s year-long journey to WPP.
Myself (along with my three business partners) sold our business.
It wasn’t a year-long journey.
It was fourteen years since the business started.
It was over forty years in the making of my life.
It was time.

The promise.

We were looking for a way to make the business scale.
WPP was the number one player in the marketing and communications space.
We were looking for a way to go global.
We turned Twist Image into Mirum and suddenly the agency was 2500 people in 30 offices (or close to that).
We were looking for a way to expand our services.
By turning Twist Image (our two-office Canadian agency) into Mirum, it happened.
Many other entrepreneurs who had sold to WPP came together to form Mirum.
Unified.
Mirum still marches on today.
Mirum is a part of Wunderman Thompson in WPP.
We gave our baby a good home.
I take pride in that.

The reality.

Often, when you’re not looking to sell a business is the best time to sell a business.
Luck is often needed to have perfect timing.
It’s a business not a human.
So, it was never sad to let “my baby” go.
Stay as long as needed but no longer than wanted.
I stayed on from 2014 until 2018.
It was time for a change.
Not just for me… but for Mirum.
Who you are is more important than what you do.
The real magic of that business was the partnership.
Aubrey, Mark, Mick and Myself.
To this day we are close friends.
We are a true family.
That is the miracle of the business.
How many partnerships survive?
Ours did.
Ours does.
Some of the greatest rock bands in the world don’t make it.
Some of the greatest marriages in the world don’t make it.
We made it.
We made it work.
I’m most proud of that.
And the work.
And the people on the team.
And the ideas that we launched.
And the fact that we were right.

Digital was the future.

What now seems obvious was once a dream of something different.

Today, it’s 6 years later. Two years since leaving.

I write.
I speak.
I podcast.
I invest.
I advise.
I think about what’s next.
I dream about starting up.

Twist Image afforded me that.

Tonight the four of us will raise a glass (via Zoom).
And – like it was for over twelve years – I can’t wait to see them today.

</smiles>